


Tender Offerings

by mihrsuri



Series: Tudor Alternative Universes [9]
Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Time Travel, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 03:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17460062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri
Summary: She cannot bear it, cannot bear to see this grown woman rendered in stone with bones turned to dust beneath because it should not be.





	Tender Offerings

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song of the of the same name by First Aid Kit in response to a prompt by nurselaney on tumblr. This is set in an AU of mine in which Anne Boleyn disappeared the night before her execution because she travelled through time to our time and found out she was pregnant with triplets.

She cannot bear it, cannot bear to see this grown woman rendered in stone with bones turned to dust beneath because it should not be. It should be her baby. Her baby who is still small enough for Anne to carry her in her arms. They closed the Abbey for her, so she falls to her knees. She is beyond tears, she thinks. I would have just lain down beside her and waited if not for your other siblings. Oh my little Bess, you must have been so scared without your mama. 

Did you know I loved you, she whispers to the tomb. I should have ordered more clothes for you, before the end. I should have done more. You must have been so cold, when you outgrew all your clothing. (Anne leaves a toddlers clothes on her daughters tomb - clothes and recreations of the toys she had been planning to gift Elizabeth when she visited her next). 

Anne remembers Elizabeth as warm. As small. As cuddled against her, as she sang lullabies and tried to keep the tears out of her voice (I hope you didn’t hear them my darling - I never wanted you to be scared). She will never see her daughter as she is rendered in paint, in stone because she never saw Bess grow and now she only has the images, not the life. 

She asks if she can leave flowers for her, the flowers that Bess had loved Bess as a little girl. If she can have them planted at The Tower, where they had taken her baby. If she cannot keep her daughter warm and safe she can give her this small thing, this totem that her mama loves her. That her mama will always love her.


End file.
